Microsoft's Terry Myerson, corporate vice president of Windows Phone, talks about the competition. "With iPhone, I sense that it's running out of steam. With iOS, [Apple] just added a fifth row of icons. Android is... kind of a mess. Look at Samsung - there's clearly mutiny going on. The only OEM making money off of Android is Samsung." There's truth to all these statements, which makes it all the more surprising that Microsoft appears to be unable to properly capitalise on them. Sure, WP appears to be doing well in a few select markets, but by no means the kind of success Microsoft and (Nokia) was banking on. Microsoft will pull through. Nokia on the other hand...

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For WP, not only do you have to still write and debug the drivers (like with WinCE, there's too much hardware diversification for drivers to spread like with Windows on Intel),

You write a small amount of driver code compared to other platforms because Microsoft has a rather short list of hardware configurations that you must adhere to.

The SoC (including cellular radios and WiFi) and GPU are pretty much set in stone. You can differentiate on camera technology and other small things, but its no major haul.

Also, Microsoft works pretty closely with its OEMs. Not always the case on other platforms.

That being said, moving to the NT Kernel enables a familiar driver model to OEMs, plus most Android devices use these same chipsets and components anyway.
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But now you're very limited in your selections, vendors, etc. Or you can use Android and use whatever you want, and probably get very good support from the Linux kernel already, or be able to work very closely with the vendor to develop what you need - and you don't have to work with Microsoft to do it, so you can also shop around to find the best vendor and price for the work.

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but you also have to pay the licensing fees, which are at least what Microsoft is trying to extort from vendors for their patents for Android. (Not saying those patents are valid, just pointing out what they are doing.)

Plus likely a little more, since you're only paying Microsoft off to use Android. Then there's Apple, Nokia, and others who will soon come knocking. "

If they don't come knocking at your door for using Windows Phone and other stuff too, then there is cause for legal action. So you have to pay them all off no matter what if you pay any of them off.

IOTW, using Windows Phone isn't going to save you money from the extortionists, but it will cost you more money in licensing fees for the base OS itself.

Hint: They're are zero final judgements, and all settlements are sealed. There's zero evidence that anyone is actually paying Microsoft anything for using Android despite settling with them, only what Microsoft claims as the other side tends not say anything.